by Henry Porter
‘Who were they?’ shouted Herrick, thinking it was certainly fitting that Gibbons had now himself been drugged and driven off unconscious.
‘My backup, my people,’ he said.
‘Who’re your people?’
‘Another time,’ he replied, straining left and right to look for an opening in the traffic. ‘The transport is about to leave the police building. We must get into position.’
‘What will they do with Gibbons?’
‘Take him somewhere and dump him. He’ll be fine, but he won’t remember who he is or where he is for a day or two.’
They found a way through the jam that brought them near to the café, and stopped alongside a line of minibuses disgorging passengers and admitting others with equal numbers of cumbersome packages. For a few minutes they waited in the sweltering heat. Foyzi’s eyes darted between the screen of his mobile and the throng of people around the car. Then the phone beeped twice with a text message.
‘It’s coming,’ he said. ‘He’s on the next truck.’
He nosed forward through the crowd and within a very short time they saw the truck moving out of the side street. It was accompanied by a car that had edged round the truck and was forging through the traffic with occasional blasts on its siren. Herrick relayed all this information to Guthrie. There were four policemen in the car, and two guards carrying automatics could be seen through the open back of the truck. She caught sight of The Doctor in the passenger seat of the truck. Khan had to be inside. Guthrie told her to use the radio from now on so that everyone could hear.
Foyzi worked the little Fiat into position, about three vehicles behind the truck, which was moving at about 15 mph. There was much competition among the other cars around them to fall into the truck’s slipstream, but Foyzi held their place effortlessly.
They reached the Kahn al Khalili souk where the traffic became less responsive to the police siren, and they stopped for minutes at a time. Herrick used the fan fixed to the Fiat’s dashboard to cool her face and glanced idly down the warren of passages into the souk. A further ten minutes passed. Then the traffic seemed suddenly to ease and the truck moved away at a speed of 40 mph. Foyzi dodged to keep in touch, but was forced to stop at some traffic lights where they knew the first lookout man was positioned. They heard his terse commentary over the radio and then shot off in pursuit of the truck, which to their relief followed the predicted route, turning left on a road called Salah Salem and then right into the cemetery. Herrick called out, ‘Three minutes to landing. Repeat. ETA - three minutes.’
Harland had moved very little in the heat, but when he heard Herrick’s voice he got out of the Isuzu and lifted his binoculars to the cemetery road. From his vantage point 150 yards away, he had seen the blue and white Peugeot stop some ten minutes before and Munroe Herrick leave the car with Selvey. Despite Munroe’s reputation, Harland was extremely doubtful about allowing a man in his eighties to take part in the operation. However, he observed him now, moving without the slightest sign of age or heat fatigue. He was dressed in a light summer jacket and a broad-brimmed straw hat. Selvey was in a long floral skirt and a hat tied with a scarf under her chin. Together they looked as though they were about to attend the Chelsea Flower Show or a vicarage garden party.
Harland saw Munroe set up an easel in the shade of one of the monuments that bordered the road. Very soon he was sitting on a collapsible fishing stool, sketching the view that Harland had been staring at these past few hours - the parched sandstone necropolis and, beyond it, Cairo and the flood plain of the Nile in a dusty blue haze. It was a pity he’d never finish the picture.
In almost every respect the place was perfect for an ambush. The traffic was very light indeed. Just four cars had passed in the previous five minutes. The walls either side of the road were never less than ten feet high, so no one would be able to see what was going on when the police convoy was intercepted. And there would be very little danger from stray bullets. There were many open doorways into the cemetery either side of the road and the numerous smaller byways which criss-crossed the area. At two different points these held the vehicles that the snatch squad would use in their escape.
For a moment Harland’s attention was caught by three or four black kites wheeling in the sky high above the cemetery. His concentration snapped back to earth and he moved the binoculars down the incline to settle on a group of barefoot children playing in the stretch about 200 yards from Munroe. He hoped they wouldn’t get wind of the old man. If they were drawn to him for baksheesh it would badly complicate things. He swept the cemetery on the far side of the road, pausing to examine the figures moving between the memorials. One or two people were sleeping in the shade of the more elaborate tombs. He wasn’t sure which of these belonged to Colonel B’s squad of SAS veterans, but he knew they were there because of the radio checks every ten minutes.
He saw the police vehicles leave the main road and begin the steady climb towards Munroe. The car in front moved a little too quickly for the truck and twice had to slow down to wait.
Harland got back behind the wheel, started the engine and, leaving it in neutral, let the handbrake off so that the Isuzu began to creep down the narrow stony track to the cemetery road. If all went well, he would arrive behind the police truck, ready to receive Khan, Herrick and Foyzi. But the timing had to be just right.
The radio sprang to life. ‘Final positions, please. Runway clear.’ Then Sarre’s voice could be heard counting away the distance - ‘Five hundred yards and closing. Four hundred. Three-fifty.’ When he reached two hundred, Munroe got up, felt in his pocket and handed something to Selvey. They were replacing their radio earpieces with earplugs.
Not far from them, a bundle of rags moved slightly - a beggar dozing in the dappled shade of a eucalyptus tree shifting something hidden in the sackcloth. Across the road a cart loaded with sugar cane seemed to move of its own accord. Harland could just make out two pairs of boots beneath it.
The police car showed round the first part of the Z bend and climbed the rutted stretch towards Munroe. Then came the truck, heeling as it took the potholes. Some way off, the little Fiat driven by Foyzi tore through the dust kicked up by the two bigger vehicles.
As Harland inched forward, his view of the road remained unimpaired. The whole plan began to unfold in front of him. Munroe was the first to move. He got up from his seat and managed to dislodge his hat, which rolled off across the road. This seemed to cause the old man some distress and he went in pursuit of it, holding his back and moving with great difficulty. He added further to the impression of frailty by waving a stick in the air and knocking over his easel. At this moment the police vehicle came round the bend and, without slowing down, drove between him and the hat. Munroe seemed to become disorientated in the cloud of dust, fell forwards and rolled onto his side. Harland prayed the driver of the truck would see him. He did brake, but only just in time, at which point several things happened. Smoke grenades went off in the road behind and in front of the two vehicles. The load of sugar cane erupted and three men wearing gas masks jumped into the road, shooting out the police car’s tyres and radiator. The vehicle juddered to a halt with its blue light still flashing in vain. At this, another man sprang from an opening in the wall and propelled a small canister of knockout gas through the window. None of the four men had any time to react.
A second or two before, Munroe rolled over in the road and aimed a machine pistol with one hand at the truck’s front tyres and engine. He was joined by Selvey, who raised her sidearm in a textbook two-handed aim. The rear tyres were cut to ribbons by two other men who had leapt from behind a wall, and for good measure they threw a stun-grenade in the general direction of the truck. The driver had been on the point of jumping down when it exploded and he fell to earth like a dead bird.
Harland plunged through the narrow opening, scraping the underside of his vehicle on a boulder, and landed in the road just behind the truck. He saw the Fiat parked with both its front
doors open and Isis Herrick running up the road into the smoke. This was the very last thing she should have been doing because three policemen, who had been protected from the worst effects of the stun-grenade, had spilled from the open door at the back of the truck with their rifles. Harland had no choice but to steer the Isuzu into one and then slammed a second by opening his door while the vehicle was still moving. The third man had scuttled round the truck and was taking aim. Harland got out and sprinted to tackle him. The gun went off at the moment he collided with his upper thighs and sent him into the dirt. Harland was aware that his back wouldn’t take the jolt but pushed the thought to the back of his mind. While Colonel B’s men disarmed the three policemen, Harland picked himself up painfully and went to the front to find Isis bent over her father. He appeared to have sprained his right wrist but that was all. The Peugeot getaway car had already been summoned, and before long Munroe and Selvey were being rushed towards it through the smoke. Isis stood looking utterly stricken, but then her father bent down to pick up his hat and waved a cheery goodbye over his shoulder.
It was a bizarre sight, and no one was more astonished than The Doctor, who remained in the passenger seat of the truck as if he had suffered a seizure. Foyzi opened the door and pulled him down into the road at gunpoint uttering many imprecations under his breath, then took him by the scruff of the neck and marched him to the rear of the truck. Harland and Herrick followed.
They went through all the cells. Two men were released but neither bore the slightest resemblance to Khan and were told to make a run for it while they could.
‘Maybe they’ve got him on another truck,’ suggested Colonel B, wiping his face. ‘Inform this cunt that you will shoot him if he doesn’t tell us where Karim Khan is.’
Foyzi placed the silencer of his pistol against The Doctor’s temple. After a moment of deliberation, The Doctor lifted his head and pointed inside the truck.
‘There’s a compartment in the floor,’ shouted Isis. ‘Look, there are two hinges.’
They wrenched the door up with crowbars. Beneath the steel plate Khan was lying bound, gagged and blindfolded in a space not much larger than a coffin. His feet were a blackened mess and his groin was stained with blood and urine. The rest of his clothes were sodden. They lifted him from this hold with infinite care and moved him to the light. Herrick took off the blindfold and gag and told him he was in safe hands, but he seemed not to understand and moved his head rhythmically from side to side like a blind singer.
‘For the love of God…’ said one of Colonel B’s men.
‘No,’ said Harland, remembering with an almost physical pain his own time at the hands of a torturer. He shook his head and turned to The Doctor ready to kill him.
The Colonel put up his arm. ‘We’d better be about our business,’ he said. ‘Get Khan into Harland’s vehicle and give him a shot of morphine.’
‘What about this man?’ Harland asked, pointing to The Doctor. ‘He knows Isis. We can’t leave him here.’
The Colonel nodded. ‘I rather thought we’d take him with us.’
‘And?’ said Harland.
‘Well, obviously we can’t take him all the way home to Syria or Iraq, or wherever the devil he comes from, but we can certainly give him a ride to, say, the middle of the Sinai desert.’
Harland, Isis and Foyzi got in with Khan and made their way through the remainder of the smoke. Colonel B’s men melted into the cemetery, two of them running The Doctor towards a container lorry waiting with its engine ticking over a little way off.
The radio came to life again. It was Guthrie. ‘I’m sure you’ll want to join me in thanking the Captain for a perfect landing. Local time is 4.25 p.m. The temperature is ninety-two degrees. Welcome to Cairo. Please remain seated until the aircraft has stopped moving.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The island where they took Khan lay some two hundred miles south of Cairo, below a great bend in the Nile. Thirteen hours after leaving the cemetery they made a rendezvous with a boat named Lotus, hidden at the edge of a sugar plantation. Khan’s stretcher was loaded across the bow and secured with ropes. The boatman pushed off into the current and, using only a long oar at the stern, steered them downstream towards the island. There was no man-made light to be seen for miles around and the moonless night had an infinite clarity. When the boat found a breeze in the centre of the river, Herrick peered down at Khan to see if he was cold. She watched his eyes open and then his entire face spread and relax. A curtain was being drawn back.
The Lotus glided silently towards a cleft on the island and the boatmen punted the last few yards to the bank with the oar. The shapes of several men appeared and moved down to the river’s edge to catch the boat and lead it into a berth of ancient wooden piles. One man waded through the water holding up a white robe. It was Sammi Loz. He bent down, touched Khan’s shoulder and said something. There was no response.
‘How bad is he?’ he asked Harland.
‘Not good.’
The stretcher was borne up the bank by four men to a group of single-storey buildings arranged loosely around a courtyard and hidden from the river by a screen of vegetation. At the corner of the courtyard, light came from an open door, revealing a room with a faded mural of flowers and exotic birds, a low wooden bed, some chairs and a couple of oil lamps. They lifted Khan from the stretcher and laid him on the bed. He stirred and seemed to recognise Loz, then Herrick, but he plainly doubted what he was seeing and tried to reach out to touch Loz’s face.
Loz told him to stay still, lifting Khan’s head to give him some water and a sleeping pill. When Khan’s eyes closed a few minutes later, Loz set about removing the rags from his friend’s emaciated body with a pair of surgical scissors he’d found in the medical bag. He took each strip of cloth and dropped it neatly into a pile. Then he asked Foyzi to run a light over Khan very slowly so he could see the extent of his injuries. He stopped to look at the burns on his genitals where the electrodes had been applied. He sponged away the grime and blood and dabbed the livid red and black weals with anti-bacterial ointment. With Herrick’s help he rolled Khan onto his side so that he could treat similar injuries on his back, buttocks and the inside of his thighs. Then he cleaned and dressed the chafe marks on his hands and ankles.
Khan’s feet presented a greater problem. They were so swollen and bruised that it was hard to distinguish the toes from the rest of the foot. Loz suspected there might be one or two broken bones but said he wouldn’t be able to tell until Khan had had an X-ray. There was little he could do, apart from giving him painkillers and arnica to help the bruising. He said that many weeks of physiotherapy lay ahead.
Throughout the hour he spent tending his friend, Loz paid as much attention to the general trauma as to the particular injuries, judging the position of his spine and shoulder blades now that he was in repose. He touched the back of his head, neck and pelvis lightly, gazing up to the flickering light on the ceiling to concentrate better on the distortions and misalignments that his fingers found. Occasionally he shook his head but said nothing. At length he asked Foyzi for a pen and paper, and made some notes on his lap.
Harland signalled to Herrick that he was going outside. She followed. They had agreed during the journey that one of them should always be with Khan and Loz to hear anything that passed between them, but Khan was obviously going to be out for some time and Foyzi was keeping a close eye on both of them.
They sat down on an open terrace a little distance away. For several minutes Harland stared down at the insects that had gathered round a light, then shook himself from his reverie and looked at her vacantly. ‘Yes,’ he said slowly. ‘What we need is a drink and a smoke. I’ve got some whisky in my bag. Have you got any cigarettes?’
She shook her head.
‘Damn.’
Foyzi came through the door and tossed him a packet of Camel Light. ‘Compliments of the establishment,’ he said, turning back to Loz.
‘Who the hell is Foyzi
?’ asked Herrick quietly.
‘He’s in your business, actually - a freelance, as fly as you get. But he’s reliable and loyal.’
‘And all this?’
‘He must have done a deal with the local Islamist nutters for the island. This area is crawling with them. They hide out in mountain caves either side of the Nile.’
‘Where’s he from?’
‘He’s Jordanian, based in Turkey. He had something to do with the Iraqi opposition but now works all over the Middle East. I came across him about a year ago when the UN needed a line to Hamas. Foyzi fixed a meeting in Lebanon.’